Well, apparently I am. Lately I have noticed that my guy friends talk about women like I'm not there. This is surely the result of the "best girl friend" aura that I seem to have, where boys feel they can just be boys around me. For the most part it's fun and I'm sure it would provide great insight into men if I were able to learn something substantive from their openness. But lately the conversations sound like this:

Guy A: Yeah, so I was at my gym and...Guy B: Did you see that hottie?Guy A: Yup, hottie was present and accounted for. Smokin'!Guy B: I'd tap that.Guy A: I'd bang that in a second!Guy B: So are you gonna talk to her?Guy A: Fo sho. She's got a sick body.Guy B: She's a cutie.Guy A: She's kinda a slut... but that's cool.

(names of the participants have been changed to protect their feeble attempts to woo women countywide)

So today I had had enough. I took my case to a wise (female) friend. I told her I was losing my faith in men based on a few factors, not least of all being privy to this sort of guy talk. She was quick to point out two things. The first is that men act macho when they're with each other. I had honestly never thought of this. Was Guy A bandying these terms about in an effort to impress upon Guy B his superior masculinity? Maybe. Girl-getting and girlwatching is a time-honored male sport of bonding; I was forgetting that.

And secondly, she pointed out, they would think WE were crazy if they heard what we say in their absence! Before I could debate her on this, I had a thought. It went like this:

Girl A: Yeah, so he didn't email me back!Girl B: That's crazy. I mean, when you constantly are emailing, you are creating a LEVEL OF EXPECTATION.Girl A: And he didn't honor that!Girl B: That just shows he lacks character.Girl A: Or maybe just email access?Girl B: Well, think back to his last email. What did he say? Were there any clues in there that he was going to cut communication?Girl A: He said he'd talk to me later.Girl B: Did he say "talk" or did he say "email?"Girl A: Not sure...Girl B: Because it makes a difference... Did you say anything unusual to him in your email? Girl A: I told him I had a lot of work to do tonight. Girl B: OH NO! That's like basically TELLING him you have no time for a relationship!Girl A: Shit.Girl B: It's ok, I mean, you didn't know. But we have to figure out how to fix this.Girl A: I think I still have his last email, should I forward it to you?Girl B: Yeah, and cc Girl C on it. I bet she'd have some insight too. We'll analyze his email for you.Girl A: So I shouldn't call him?Girl B: You have to play the game!Girl A: I don't like the game though.Girl B: But you have to be in it to win it.

I want to disassociate myself from such scenarios, but then I'd be discrediting the *amazing* email analysis service I have offered various girlfriends. So my friend isn't that far off in pointing out that girls act crazy and weird when they don't think the other sex is listening. And that, if examined in a vacuum, our behavior would scare men too.

I feel better now.

So next I"m going to try to understand the disconnect between what men *say* they want and what they go for in reality. My paper, tentatively entitled: "A little bitchy never killed a relationship: A scientific examination" will be forthcoming.

Got this survey from someone on MySpace. Allow me to catch you up on who I am- a story of me, in firsts.

1. Who was your FIRST prom date?Jason Marczak, one of my close friends from high school. We wore matching clothes. I had the red dress and he had the red vest to go with it. We just reconnected on Facebook. Gotta love Facebook.

2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love? Never had a love like dat. Does Kirk Cameron count?

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink? Sadly, it was probably Bud Light or Zima. I probably had sips of stuff earlier, but one of my earliest memories of getting trashed involves shotgunning Bud Lights in South Haven, Michigan.

4. What was your FIRST job? Working for my mom as an office manager/helper, as a trade for my first pair of army boots :)

5. What was your FIRST car?My mom's old silver Mitsubishi Montero. Such an awesome car. I still miss it.

6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?Texting was quiet today! I think Anita was, but that was late afternoon. It was beautiful out and people were outside I guess!

7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning? Myself? :)

8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher? Mrs. Lovi. She hated me, despite my stellar contributions to the Lovi Local.

9. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane? Not sure, I think London? My mom took me. I was teensy, like in a "basinette, stowed in front of her feet" way.

10. Who was your FIRST best friend and are you still friends with them?Lindsey I think? Not in touch with her.

11. What was your FIRST sport played? I think swimming? But team-wise, that would be my glory week in junior high volleyball.

12. Where was your FIRST sleep over?Probably Mama Kay's house (our babysitter). Friend-wise, it was probably Lindsey's house.

13. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?Anita. She was at yoga class with me.

14. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time? My cousin Haleh's - I was a flowergirl, about 4/5 years old?

15. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?Checked email on my phone. Isn't that sick?! Then got up and went to Bikram (hot yoga).

16. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to? New Kids on the Block... do we really need to go into this again? ;)

17. FIRST tattoo or piercing?Ears yo when I was 8. But beyond the traditional, probably the piercing at the top of my left ear in the cartilage?

18. FIRST foreign country you went to? Probably England.

19. What was your FIRST run in with the law?Probably my speeding ticket in HP. Otherwise - border control on the way back from Canada with my suspiciously dark-skinned friends :)

22. Who was the FIRST person to break your heart? Matt Evans, when he told me he hated my haircut in 3rd grade. (my hair had been brutally chopped, so in retrospect 20 years later, I can probably forgive him)

23. Who was your FIRST roommate? Probably the girl from my summer program at Wellesley (sp?), but I forget her name. The important first roomies were Seema and crazy Princess Carrie at Michigan. The Seemster just moved to SD which has been loads of fun. It's like freshman year minus the crazy naked ostrich roommate.

24. Where did you go on your FIRST limo ride?O'Hare airport. That's just how we rolled in Chi-town, yo!

So, tonight I was thinking- good things are supposed to come to those who wait, right? But why do we all *know* that you have to bang the hell out of the side of the bottle to make the ketchup flow?

In other thoughts, today I decided to diagnose a personality disorder. Not my own (I don't believe in self-diagnosis...) but someone else's. This someone else BUGS. It's one of those things where I don't know the person enough to pinpoint why she annoys me, but I already know that, should I take the time to get to know her, she would annoy me, thus I allow myself to be lightly annoyed from a very pleasant distance.

Anyway, I was talking with Jessica tonight about this girl's personality problem. (You see, I'm only one of many people who seem to have this reaction to said person. Here, let me give you something to go off: she's one of those people who, even though she's met you and been personally introduced to you repeatedly, she ignores you until someone introduces you again, at which point she offers you her limp handshake. Blech.

I have diagnosed her with Personality Diarrhea. An absolute inability to control the obnoxiousness of her personality, her mannerisms, even (apparently, as was discovered after 2 hours of having to sit behind her at an event) her laugh. She can't contain it. Whatever is in her childhood, the resulting effects just run (pun intended) out of her, to the disturbance of those around. I use her as an example, but it absolutely applies to many other people, I'm sure. I'm just using her as an example because she snubbed me today (at first) and I like to use my literary revenge whenever I can. I do NOT take snubbing well.

In case you're wondering how that turned out, I then started playing a game called "I'm Deaf". I mean, I had never really cared for her, but I'd always thought "well, she's just getting used to figuring out who I am". But by now she should know my face as well as her mama's, I've seen her enough. So I let the initial snubbage ride. Then, a half hour into our outing (I don't know what happened, the guys we were with had started watching the game and weren't responding to her throwing popcorn at them or something) she began turning around and randomly commenting to me. Baiting me for conversation. And trust me, people, there was a LOT to talk about at this tournament. Apparently rugby fans dress up like it's Halloween, and our section was the guys dressed like Hooters Girls. There was no shortage of conversational material.

So, back to our story: we find our Heroine (me) being volleyed with light conversational tidbits from her Subject. Apparently she was THAT desperate for attention (attention desperation = the "personality" part of her particular PD disorder) and waiting for me to take the bait and be the bend-over-backwards friendly person I usually am... but PMS restrained me from being that good woman today.

Her: (Wrenching around in her seat) "Wow, what's he doing on the team?!" (let me point out here that the guy was Asian and was on some team just not from Asia-- you know, like, I dunno, France. Apparently she doesn't think Asians should emigrate. You're starting to see my point about her.)
Me: Eyes at the scoreboard, intently soaking in Samoa's first goal. Like SUPER intently.
Her: (turns back around, to replot her strategy)

Her: (turns back around, at some nondescript point in the game and says something inane like) "Wow, I mean, what's even happening?!"
Me: Eyes on the field, a laser directly pointing over her head, avoiding eye contact, but with my mouth slightly ajar as if amazed by play, completely fascinated to the point of being physically UNABLE to respond to her.

This method proved highly effective, much to my joy. If only I was genuinely deaf, I might have had better luck actually tuning out the voice, but we can do that on the Beta trial.

It was fun. All those years I've spent trying to win over the most unwinnable-overable personalities were wasted folks. Today I have seen the light. Some people just have a complete inability to control themselves or their obnoxiousness and you, too, America, you can tune them out. Just turn off your ears. It sounds cruel, but when you think of it, it's what our parents did to us all day long!

(This public service announcement has been sponsored by Personality Pepto.)